The invention relates to the use of virtual flares and automatic detection of potentially dangerous vehicle trajectories to protect roadside personnel, such as police officers, stopped along the roadside and their vehicles. Although directed to police officers, the system of the present invention is useful to protect any person stopped along the roadside.
Personnel on the side of a road, such as police officers at a traffic stop, are endangered by vehicles that stray into the shoulder area. This danger is increased when drivers are distracted or incapacitated. Measures can be taken to get the attention of drivers and divert them from the shoulder area to mitigate the danger by using visual markers such as flares along the edge of the road. However, placing such visual markers takes time and exposes the person placing the markers to potential danger while doing so.
Further, personnel on the side of the road are typically not able to simultaneously perform their assigned task, such as, in the case of a police officer, interacting with a stopped driver, and look behind them to scan for potential vehicular threats. This danger can be made even more serious if the roadside personnel is operating during times of limited visibility, such as at night.
Efforts have been made by others to incorporate lasers as a means of alerting drivers of roadway conditions. Known examples of this include the use of lasers or lights to project markings on the road around bicycle riders. These include the LightLane designed by Altitude Inc. and the Xfire Bike Lane Safety Light, both of which use lasers to project a virtual lane on both sides of a cyclist so that drivers would be more aware of the space the cyclist needs; the BLAZE bicycle light which projects an image on the road a distance in front of the cyclist to alert vehicles ahead of the cyclist that there is a cyclist behind them; and Lumigrids, which projects a grid in front of the cyclist to highlight any dangers, such as potholes, present on or in the roadway.
However, there are no known convenient systems that both diverts oncoming drivers from the area where personnel is exposed to potential danger and alerts personnel to vehicles that pose a potential threat.